I’m happy to be hosting a guest post from the Camden School District (Ashley McGrath) here today. As we’ve been critical here of the school district, I’ve been reaching out to different folks to provide alternate perspectives. This post is a start. It promotes a matching grant to fund teacher projects, and encourages parents to take part:
Thanks to a generous $300,000 donation from Townsend Press of New Jersey, Camden Public School teachers have an exciting opportunity to obtain funding for classroom initiatives while simultaneously engaging their parent communities in the work happening in their classrooms.
The DonorsChoose civic engagement partnership offers the opportunity for teachers to receive matching funds. After posting a project at DonorsChoose.org, teachers are expected to secure half of the funding for their project. After the project is halfway funded, Townsend Press will pay off the balance.
Teachers can reach out to their families and friends or hope random visitors to DonorsChoose decide to help fund their project. But there’s a third option, which is what makes this community engagement project more interesting.
To help engage parents in reaching the halfway-funding mark, every Camden school is receiving a $100 gift card for the family of every student in the building. These gift cards give local parents the opportunity to choose to fund classroom initiatives directly impacting their student. Principals have been encouraged to offer extended computer lab hours, or hold a DonorsChoose open house, in order to create opportunities for parents to redeem their gift cards. There has already been a surge in the number of gift cards redeemed through the DonorsChoose website.
There are currently over 100 Camden projects posted on DonorsChoose. Teachers have requested everything from bean bags and books for their reading corners, to step counters for a physical fitness unit, class sets of iPads and fishing poles and tackle boxes. Right now, even if every Camden Public Schools project was fully funded, there would still be funds left in the $300,000 reserve.
The deadline for teachers to submit a project request has been lifted but gift cards expire in March. Encourage every Camden teacher and parent you know to take advantage of this opportunity. The faster they submit a project request, the more likely the project will be fully funded.
A complete listing of projects can be found here.
This civic engagement partnership was recently highlighted in the Inquirer.
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